it seems an emotional collapse, almost shakespearian... [erratic.]

[from dailykos...]

Is McCain Losing It? No... Seriously.

by Hunter

Fri Oct 10, 2008 at 11:15:02 AM PDT

A story from Michael Kinsley about John McCain at the craps table seems to me a perfect allegory for John McCain's current campaign:

"McCain immediately turned to the woman and said between clenched teeth: 'DON'T TOUCH ME.' The woman started to explain...McCain interrupted her: 'DON'T TOUCH ME,' he repeated viciously. The woman again tried to explain. 'DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU'RE TALKING TO?' McCain continued, his voice rising and his hands now raised in the 'bring it on' position. He was red-faced. By this time all the action at the table had stopped. I was completely shocked. McCain had totally lost it, and in the space of about ten seconds. 'Sir, you must be courteous to the other players at the table,' the pit boss said to McCain. "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? ASK ANYBODY AROUND HERE WHO I AM."

Fair or not, this adds a little color to the speculations as to whether McCain just so passionately hates Obama that he can't bring himself to treat him with anything but barely concealed contempt.

I'm honestly beginning to think that McCain is... unhinged. Not by a lot, but by enough. In addition to stories like this, I can't help but look at the McCain/Palin campaign's sudden, apparently random focus on Obama and Ayers -- in the middle of a complete economic meltdown, no less -- and think, what the hell? Yes, I know that campaigns have strategies, and tactics, and phalanxes of people who sit down and game out what the candidates should be talking about, every minute of every day, but you have to be a special kind of "out of touch" to all but ignore a worldwide financial panic and spend your time instead talking to Hannity about the suspicious ancient hieroglyphics you've dug up that shows your opponent went to some guy's house for a party once, or was on a board with him, or whatever the hell they're going on at now that proves they're secretly best buds or something. Fine, we get it -- negative campaigning. But now, with no dearth of urgent actual issues to be attended to?

Really? You really think that's the most important thing you could be talking about, right now? What -- are you high on cough syrup?

I also think you have to be more than a little nuts -- or at least very, very bitter -- to be egging on crowds to the extent that both Palin and McCain have been. The last week has seen Republican rallies turn into screaming hate-fests, celebrations of the notion that the other candidate is a terrorist, or is anti-American, or is a danger to the nation or the like: stuff that the Secret Service really, really dislikes, and would generally put a stop to if it wasn't their own damn charges leading the rhetoric. From Palin, I'd expect it. She's proven herself at this point to be dumb as a fucking rock, and has a history of being bitterly, viciously mean in service of whatever it is she wants. She probably thinks the rallies are a hoot.

McCain I would have presumed a bit more from. Yes, he's had these craps-table outbursts and the like, but this prolonged, truly spiteful turn is positively creepy, and, I'll just say it, not something you would expect from a man whose self-esteem is so apparently inseparable from his notions of his own military honor. It seems an emotional collapse, almost Shakespearian; the antihero, foiled in life one too many times, turns into a plotting, mean-spirited beast, determined to pull the whole world down around his ears if he can't get what he wants.

He's having a damn temper-tantrum, that's what it is, but on a world stage. He's directing his entire campaign, his entire party, every supporter he can reach into a face-reddening, arm-flailing, carpet-kicking group temper tantrum, simply because the polls came back that show him running out of other options.

Is this like the craps table incident, writ large? Is it the way McCain is prone to act, when he's losing or feels cornered? I don't know, but if this is the way he runs his campaign when under stress, I don't want him anywhere near the White House, much less in it. The only thing worse than the incompetent, hyper-aggressive foreign policy of the neoconservatives would be that same neoconservative foreign policy tethered to an unpredictable man-child prone to fits of irrational rage. At least Bush was too lazy to get into more than two wars: with McCain, we'd be starting wars based on what he had for breakfast each day.

~lee.

9:38 — [Brokaw cries about dumb ineffectual rules for another minute]...

[from wonkette...]

9:00 PM — Good morning, Asian stock markets! The NIKKEI index is already down 340 points. Australian markets are down about 4%. Hong Kong’s down 879 points.

9:00 PM — Hey here is a fun thing we hope to use tonight: C-SPAN debate hub! Make your own clips of embarrassing McCain moments, or when Sarah Palin rushes onstage with a noose.

9:00 PM — OMG this is such a clean, well-lighted town hall. Who knew we had such nice things, in the Depression?

9:01 PM — Rules: No rambling, no reading Sarah Palin’s old index cards.

9:01 PM — Oh hi, Tom Brokaw! You are looking sharp for a long-retired news anchor from “the past.”

9:01 PM — Brokaw picked the questions! He is in the tank for McCain because he wrote that book about “The Greatest Depression,” when McCain was a wealthy ne’er-do-well young bachelor.

9:02 PM — McCain waddles out, looking grim and terrible. You know how your Obama looks.

9:03 PM — “The world has changed a great deal, and not for the better.” That is Brokaw, dooming us.

9:03 PM — They flipped a coin! These rich elitists still have coins!

9:04 PM — And Steve Schmidt asks the first question.

9:04 PM — Solid start for Barry. McCain is stooped over his little child’s desk, grimacing. This is what Bob Dole did! (”Bob Dole doesn’t like that.”)

9:05 PM — McCain got out of his chair!

9:05 PM — Barack is sounding good, talking right at the guy, but is he connecting?

9:06 PM — McCain starts off by insulting Obama, “Senator Obama, good to be with you at a town hall meeting.” He leers and winks. Oh dear god.

9:06 PM — McCain immediately wanders away from the bald guy who asked the question. McCain says he would make the government buy all the bad mortgages in America. Wow, that is total socialism!

9:08 PM — “My friends,” three times in the first answer! Drink, drink, drink.

9:08 PM — Oh, and McCain answers, when Brokaw asks him about who would run this operation, as treasury secretary. McCain angrily barks, “Not you, Tom.” A bit of nervous laughter. Good god. Then he mentions Warren Buffet.

9:09 PM — Ha ha, McCain wants us all to make our living selling our possessions on eBay.

9:10 PM — Obama offhand mentions that Warren Buffet, you know, supports Obama. But we’ll deal with that later?

9:10 PM — This is what should carry over: Obama saying one problem is the decline in house prices, but the larger problem is that incomes are declining.

9:12 PM — Oh, did you hear that McCain “left my campaign, and suspended it” to fly to Washington and fuck up the bailout/rescue deal for a week, letting about $1.5 trillion in equity values vanish? Good work!

9:12 PM — Ha ha ha, now McCain is pretending he even knew there was an economy two years ago, and he was going to fix Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac! By, uh, having all their lobbyists run his campaign.

9:13 PM — Hilarious, how McCain tells the black guy who asks the question that he never heard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before. You know, blacks!

9:14 PM — “I’ve got to correct a little bit of Senator McCain’s history, not surprisingly.”

9:14 PM — Obama has actually been bitching about the subprime crisis when only YOUR EDITOR (and all the Housing Bubble blogs) knew this was about to fall apart.

9:15 PM — Ha ha, Obama kind of glances to his side and says, “And you know, McCain’s campaign manager is the lobbyist for Fannie and Freddie, but who even cares how he fucked everything up, let’s just move on.”

9:16 PM — The women are pushing the Obama Love Button! The men are positive, but still a little weird about loving a black man.

9:17 PM — McCain also is not going to promise the economy will get worse, first. But he will continue repeating his big idea he will repeat every answer: America will buy ALL THE MORTGAGES, in America! Is this even plausible, let alone possible? Ah but the fundamentals (workers) are innocent bystanders? What?

9:18 PM — Here is Sarah Palin’s mom, asking how she can trust either of the parties, when it is all the fault of Evil Washington Insiders?

9:19 PM — And Obama … uh, doesn’t start well. Okay, surplus, right, Clinton surplus. Bush debt, deficits, nobody’s completely innocent (except all working Americans who bought houses they can’t afford, according to McCain).

9:20 PM — Health care reform budget energy blah blah the Chinese, the Saudi Arabia, you need to answer the question, Barry.

9:21 PM — Lieberman! Climate Change! This is McCain’s answer. Jesus, can ONE of you do something here? And the Men and Women of Ohio agree that McCain is blabbering even more than Obama.

9:22 PM — Pork! Earmarks! It is a good thing McCain will not vote for earmarks, or stuff to educate children, like science stuff. Probably black children, too! (Chicago.)

9:24 PM — Brokaw says what is your priority, health, energy or entitlements? McCain: “What were those again?” Brokaw repeats them. McCain says, “I, uh, think we can work on all three of those.” Reagan! My Friends! I know how to do that! Lieberman!

9:25 PM — So, no answer.

9:25 PM — What is the $700 billion dollars he’s talking about? The bailout bill he voted for? It’s for TERRORISTS???

9:25 PM — Obama: Energy is at the top of the list. Fucks up foreign policy, makes you more poor.

9:27 PM — Barack: “Sen. McCain likes to talk about earmarks a lot …. But understand this, when Sen. McCain supports a $300 billion tax cut that he’s going to give to big corporations and big oil companies,” blah.

9:28 PM — Brokaw threatens both of them for talking so goddamned long.

9:28 PM — Somebody from the Depression somehow came back from John McCain’s childhood and got inside the Internet! Jesus this is so scary. Anyway, she has a question. Why is nobody ever asked to sacrifice anything, ever, in this fat fucking country of fat fucking losers?

9:29 PM — McCain will have a spending freeze! This is how Hoover ended the Great Depression!

9:30 PM — “We’re not rifle shots here, we’re Americans.” What is Walnuts talking about?

9:30 PM — Obama: 9/11! Oh right, we all were so bewildered and terrified that we wanted to come together, and do shit, for the country, but Bush told us to go shopping. “That wasn’t the kind of call to service that the American people were looking for.” This is true! Your editor was ready to join the CIA or whatever, but he was … oh, some damned thing. Too old? Too high? No money for shopping, though, plus your editor hates motherfucking shopping. Unless it’s for wine.

9:30 — John McCain wants to cut wasteful defense spending so as to keep important defense spending, such as the War on Greece. Oops, that was supposed to be a surprise!

9:31 — Barack Obama wants to make everyone sacrifice like they did after 9/11, but not, as George W. Bush asked, to make everyone go out and shop. How is shopping not a sacrifice? We could be, you know, staying inside and eating pork rinds instead.

9:32 — He says everyone personally should think about how he or she can save energy. The CNN Ohio voters LIKE THIS? Jimmy Carter said the same thing to people 30 years ago and people just thought he was some kind of mean peanut-molesting fag.

9:34 — Barack Obama says we need to Cut The National Debt, and that means more than earmarks. In other words, he will get Hank Paulson to buy up your shotguns to sell them at profit to his terrorist friends in A.C.O.R.N.

9:35 — Obama disagrees with McCain’s proposal to cut all government spending in the middle of a depression. “What’re we buying anyway with all that money, poop or something?”

9:36 — Ha ha, McCain unleashes one of his NASTIEST ATTACKS EVER, by saying that he wants to nail Barack Obama’s Jell-o to the wall — not easy! Like most of his other attacks tonight, the Ohio Focus Group immediately flatlines. Tell Better Jokes.

9:37 — Barack Obama wants to respond, leading to the fortieth lecture from Brokaw about how they LIED TO HIM when they said they wanted these rules. “Fuck you fucks, I knew LBJ” Brokaw says.

9:38 — [Brokaw cries about dumb ineffectual rules for another minute]

9:39 — Entitlement reform, again. Barack Obama will cut taxes for 95% of America! (HE WANTS THE POORS TO THINK HE LIKES THEM.)

9:40 — McCain stands up in the middle of Obama’s turn, grinning! What happened was, “Teresa” gave him a big boner and he had to sit down and think about ugly things (his crippled first wife, Carol, is his special de-bonerizing thought), so he was really happy when he got to stand again.

9:41 — McCain: “Tom, I’ll answer your damn question, HENNGHH HEHH HENNGHHHH.” Tom hides because McCain’s breath emanates very far and smells like cat piss.

9:42 — Another black gal has a question for McCain, about the Environment. McCain will clean it while SIMULTANEOUSLY grunting about earmarks, alone, on his private ranch.

9:45 — Barack Obama wants to fix energy and the environment because of the Terrorists, who buy our air debt from China and Japan. He will have nuclear power, too! He agrees with John McCain about something, who knows, he just loves saying that he agrees with John McCain about stuff.

9:46 — Someone finishes answering a question, meaning Tom Brokaw has to yell at them both again. How do you teach those who don’t want to learn? Answer: catty sarcasm. Brokaw basically asks them if they’ve heard of clocks, which can be very useful — they tell the “time” — and especially useful during, say, TOM BROKAW’S LAST DEBATE BEFORE HE DIES. John McCain says “no”, he doesn’t know about these new Apple time gadgets or whatever, and thens asks Tom to act like a crazy retard with hands flailing to tell him the time instead.

9:48 — HEY-O, McCain points at Obama and says “THAT ONE,” as in “THAT ONE [supported it]” or “THAT ONE [is on all of your welfare!]”

9:51 — Time to discuss health care. Should it be treated as a commodity? Yes! Capitalism! Obama says “Nah nah, I’ll get you health care” and then Ellen the lesbian comes out and they dance and he starts shooting 3’s from way downtown into Brokaw’s trashcan along with his vomit.

9:53 — John McCain: Obama will give you Mandates, for your children, and then all of America’s haberdashers will be low on inventory. McCain says he’ll give a $5,000 tax credit to eliminate the employer-based system so people can have more choice. Then everyone can buy individual health insurance, the most expensive and exclusive market for needy consumers for anything on the planet. Oh god and then he brings up that “gold plated plans” crap — you know, the ones that some people need but which cost $20,000 on the open market! IT’S YR CHOICE BABY.

9:56 — Obama: “Nah nah, no McCain stuff.” Explains how he disagrees about literally everything, John McCain said, EVERYTHING. Health care should be a right! Blah blah you can cross state lines to get health care, my cheap care. Tom shuts him up after a while.

9:58 — McCain randomly stands up and laughs about Obama not answering some dumb question he wanted to hear. It was, “How old are you, you jackhole?”
This whole debate has been John McCain tremulously snickering and breathing awful thin breaths into his microphone while Barack Obama perches on his stool with a serene little smile on his face. What does this Obama know that we don’t? Why is this man smiling while the rest of America weeps? Oh hell.

10:01 PM — McCain: Barack Obama does not understand, my friends, my friend.

10:02 PM — Hopey: Yes, I do not understand how retards have been allowed to run this country for nearly a decade. Heroic and honorable troops, extraordinary debt of gratitude, &c.

10:04 PM — What are the McCain and Obama Doctrines? Sarah Palin will be asked this question in her next interview with Charlie Gibson.

10:06 PM — MY FRIENDS MY FRIENDS. Oh John McCain. Did he say “this terrible clam base, we say never again.” He wants a cool hand at the tiller, and that is why he will be voting for Barack Obama.
This McCain fellow is so unpopular that even when he says “Petraeus” he can’t goose up a little interest from the undecided voters of Ohio. We must not exacerbate our reputation, he says.

10:09 PM — Katie asks, Can we treat Pakistan like the new Cambodia? Obama says Sure why not. He also says “Pockystahn,” like an elitist. And “Tollybahn,” like a terrorist. Kill! Crush!

10:11 PM — Come Mr. Tollybahn, tolly me banana! We must use Petraeus’ strategy, the same strategy but different. The undecided voters of Ohio are really not terribly swayed by this. Tom Brokaw says, “I’m just the hired help here,” and Obama says, “You’re likable enough, Tom.”

10:13 PM — “Senator McCain suggests that I’m green behind the ears.” Huh? McCain interjects with some angry/nervous little remark. He is like the only guy at the party who doesn’t drink…making awful interrupting jokes while everybody else is just trying to enjoy themselves. The crack about bombing Iran was just a funny little quip with a war buddy, which maybe Obama doesn’t understand, because FIVE AND A HALF YEARS, ALAN.

10:18 PM — Honor and victory! Not in defeat! “We’re not going to have another cold war with Russia.” Because maybe we will have a hot war with Russia! Oh Jesus he comes out with that fucking KGB-in-the-eyes joke. Now all he has to do is talk about how the approval ratings of Congress are down to relatives and paid staffers or whatever.

10:21 PM — Senator Obama, you have 20 seconds to answer this question because John McCain wasted a bunch of air recycling jokes he has told 400 million times to sadly clumped gatherings of retirees in Bingo halls from Baton Rouge to Boca Raton. Obama says, “I wrote a memo!” He has spent a lot of time the past few years, writing many memos and letters, which were ignored.

10:23 PM — And and and! Energy, making mischief. Hmm, mischief and naked aggression. Sounds hot. Hotter than this snoozefest. Brokaw says, “Simple yes or no question,” and then asks the most provocative meatheaded warmongering question ever asked by a journalist.

10:25 PM — Question: How much do you love Israel? A lot, or a whole lot?

10:26 PM — The old stinking corpse line…the uncommitted voters of Ohio are not fans of the stinking corpse. MY FRIEND. He is now talking to some other guy sitting next to Terry Shirey like he thinks he’s Terry Shirey. All baldies look alike.

10:27 PM — Barack Obama also says THANK YOU THANK YOU for your service and all that. “I have consistently said that…” Apparently this is one of Obama’s “tells.” It means the opposite, you see, which is to say, Obama once suggested it would be fantastic if Iran got a nuclear weapon, and he would personally fellate Ahmadinejad in the public square.

10:30 PM — Ooh Noonan-esque question! “What don’t you know and how will you learn it?” Obama says, “scrimpin’” and then goes into his stump speech. (Secret answer: Obama can listen to a Mozart symphony once and then immediately transcribe the entire thing, without flaw. Which is to say, He does not know all Mozart symphonies yet.)

10:32 PM — My friends, I do not know the future, and I will learn it by continuing to live for the next 30 days or so. (Secret answer: John McCain’s last and most dramatic campaign gesture will be to stroke out, onstage, in the third debate.)

10:33 PM — “I know what it’s like, I know what it’s like.” This is supposed to sound like the voice of seasoned experience, but it just sounds like a carping supercilious old fool telling everybody how he knows more than them. And that’s all folks thanks for playing!!!

~lee.

it's hard out there, you know...

more from glenn greenwald, my intellectual rival.

[from salon...]

Thursday Oct. 2, 2008 12:33 EDT

The right's two-pronged religion of rage and self-pity

(updated below)

The Right in this country -- meaning the faction that followed George Bush for the last eight years -- long ago ceased being a movement of political ideas and is driven by two, and only two, extreme emotions: (1) intense, aggressive rage towards their revolving door of enemies, and (2) bottomless self-pity over how unfairly they're being treated. As their imminent defeat looks increasingly likely (potentially on a humiliating scale), these two impulses are in maximum overdrive, feeding off one another in endless self-perpetuation (the more they lose, the more victimized they feel, the more they rage against their enemies who oppress them, etc.).

The Right's rejection by the public can't possibly be due to anything they have done. It can only be due to some extremely vicious enemy that oppresses them uniquely and so very unfairly. For the moment, they're only losing because The Leftist Mainstream Media hates them and is deeply biased against them. Blue Texan points out just some of the painfully obvious idiocy at the heart of this specific strain of woe-is-me-ism:

It's pretty clear that [Instapundit] and the drooling Malkinites in wingnutland are getting ready to blame the corporate media when Obama wins.

The problem with this narrative is that:

a) the GOP has dominated national electoral politics for a decade, in spite of said "liberal media" conspiring to elect Democrats, and;

b) the wingnut bloggers themselves spend lots of time and energy obsessing over the idea that the mainstream media has an ever-diminishing influence/relevance (how many posts has [Instapundit] done this year of the New York Times stock price/circulation figures?)

I'm not sure how they square all of this in their little brains exactly, but it makes my head hurt.

Needless to say, whether the excuse-making is coherent or consistent matters not in the slightest. The objective, as always, is to believe that they are weak and hapless victims being stomped on by some Evil, Unfair Force, and that self-pitying worldview can then explain away every last one of their failings. That is the mentality that lies at the heart of today's right-wing ideologue; more or less, it's all there is (for a long time, it was also the media and the Left's fault -- but not theirs -- that things were going so poorly in Iraq, even though they controlled all the branches of the Government).

As Blue Texan suggests, there are literally countless facts one could cite to negate the Right's incessant, tired complaint about The Liberal Media. As but just one example, the single most influential figure dictating what is reported by The Liberal Media -- Matt Drudge -- is a supreme right-wing hack. Just as Mark Halperin and John Harris proclaimed: He's the Walter Cronkite of our era, he rules the Media World, and is the nation's assignment editor. Every story he promotes -- Gwen Ifill has a Pro-Obama Conflict of Interest!!!! -- ends up immediately infecting the narrative of The Liberal Mainstream Media. How does one explain that?

Using only undisputed facts, one could write volumes -- and many have -- destroying the self-evidently moronic claim that the media outlets owned by the nation's largest and most powerful corporations are tireless propagandists for a Leftist agenda. But those facts can never and will never penetrate because the two-pronged Right-wing dogma of objective superiority and unique victimhood is a matter of religious faith and deep personal need.

Go pick whatever right-wing journals or polemicists you want and (with some isolated exceptions) what you will find is this simultaneously self-loving and self-pitying worldview permeating virtually everything they say, think and believe. You can reduce most of their arguments, and all of their group-based drives, to a rudimentary logical proposition: "I am X, and X is both superior and treated with deep unfairness." It doesn't matter what "X" happens to be for any one of them -- conservative, male, Republican, Christian, Jewish, religious, white, Western, American -- that is the formula that expresses how they perceive the world and their role in it.

Petulance and self-pitying grievance is what fuels them. This endless need to self-victimize would be one thing if the groups to which they belonged were small minorities targeted by a hostile and more powerful majority. But the exact opposite is true. By and large, the groups to which they belong (and therefore see as oppressed and treated with unparalleled unfairness) are the most numerous and the most powerful in the country and always have been. Yet still -- nothing is their fault; they face hopeless obstacles imposed by Evil and Omnipotent Forces which hate them; "I am X, and X is both superior and treated with deep unfairness."

They have run the country for the entire decade. For the last 14 years, they've controlled the House for all but 20 months. They spent substantial parts of the last eight years in control of all branches of government simultaneously. They've won 7 out of the last 10 presidential elections. The country's largest and richest corporations -- including the ones owning the most powerful media outlets -- pour money into their party and perceive, correctly, that their interests are served by the Right's agenda. But still -- they can't get a fair shake; everything is deeply oppressive to them; it's all so unfair.

As they've ruled the country, it's been driven into the ground on every level. The President they revered and endlessly glorified is the most unpopular in modern American history. They've ushered in disastrous wars, virtual economic panic, state-sanctioned torture and astonishing debt. Their leaders have been exposed as bloated, corrupted criminals and hypocrites. Their current candidate chose as his Vice President someone who can barely string together a complete sentence or opine on the simplest of matters, and himself acknowledges that he's been joined at the hip with the failed Bush Presidency on virtually all key issues.

But still -- they're about to lose not because of anything they did, but because the corporate-owned Media hates them and is distorting their message; because they're being persecuted for their religion (which more than 75% of Americans share); because they are just weak, kind, good little Davids being hopelessly crushed by the Goliath forces arrayed in a confederacy against them. That they belong to virtually every majority group and wield most power makes no impact on any of that. This kind of self-centered, self-victimizing, self-pitying worldview provides great psychological comfort and a release from any responsibility for one's actions, and so they are highly motivated never to give it up. To the contrary, they'll cling to it -- are clinging to it -- even more desperately as their failures and rejection by the public become more vividly apparent.

UPDATE: Without endorsing all of its particulars, here is a thought-provoking blog essay from last year, by Gordon Gartrelle, on the psychological use of -- and need for -- self-victimhood by those with the most power, by those whom the author describes as "privileged victimologists."

~lee.

born in the usa...

greetings from san diego.

[from aquarium drunkard...]

Sevens (Politiko) :: Born In The U.S.A.

(Sevens, a new feature on Aquarium Drunkard, pays tribute to the art of the individual song. From now through the election, Sevens will focus on political songs)

Only twenty-four years ago, Ronald Reagan was running for re-election under the cheering banner of a slicker, better America. The story that he had been selling for four years was pockmarked with portable phones and skyscrapers, a white collar dream that we could all believe in – a future-flag that would wave us all into the 21st Century. Every tiny burg would have a Mercedes dealership, their car hoods gleaming with the reflection of Old Glory. The irony, of course, is that Reagan was seventy-three years old and an internationally-known film star who hadn’t lived in a small town in forty-seven years; The Gipper moved West in 1937, leaving Iowa City, IA, for Hollywood, a town which middle Americans would later demonize as a symbol of the out-of-touch elite. Reagan made himself a star in the early days of Hollywood, parlaying that success into a presidency of the Screen Actors Guild and, eventually, the country. In many ways, Ronald Reagan was the American Dream, pausing only long enough to dust off his shirt before he pulled the country up from the bootstraps, too. This man was One Of Us, and by 1984 he was setting up the kind of America that we had always believed was possible. We’d already won the love of the world in WWII; now was the time to globalize and pass our assets across country lines. The sun circled the earth in red, white, and blue.

Also in 1984, Bruce Springsteen, a rising rock star who had had plenty of critical success and even a Top Ten hit with “Hungry Heart,” prepared to release Born in the U.S.A. The record, Bruce’s seventh, would be the first-ever compact disc released in the United States, the miniaturized flag on the cover punctuated by the faded blue of those famous Levis. And that summer, fifteen million Americans would make Springsteen a superstar. They would spin the future in their CD players, squint at the tricolor cover, and feel their heart pump along with the martial snap of Max Weinberg’s snare drum. Garry W. Tallent’s bass would thunder through the woofers of sports cars while the dawn’s-early-light synth of Roy Bittan trickled from the tweeters. Red blood pumped. Blue eyes quelled. A golden age. And then came that thundercall shout, like a voice in the wilderness:

“Born down in a dead man’s town,” it said. “Born in the U.S.A.”

“Born in the U.S.A.” is completely lacking in the freewheelin’ party spirit that E Street perfected on Born to Run. Darkness on the Edge of Town was the hangover, The River was one last go-round, and Nebraska was rehab. But “Born in the U.S.A.” is the rebirth, the muscles rippling on a beast that has been beaten down and has only grown stronger for its trials. This furious – daresay audacious — hope is the same hope that Bruce always believed in, only stripped and compacted to its most essential power. Springsteen labored like a trenchman over the lyrics, recording version after version of demos until the song was distilled down to black tar. And while the acoustic versions recorded for the Nebraska sessions better embody the despair of the lyrics, this is a song that needs its bombs to burst in order to breathe. The solo “Born in the U.S.A.” is powerless; the E Street version is combat-ready.

The story that Bruce tells in “Born in the U.S.A.” is not hard to follow – a small-town kid gets in trouble with the law, so they ship him over to Vietnam “to go and kill the yellow man,” and returns home to find that his country isn’t terribly interested in helping him to assimilate back into American life. The “VA man,” who condescendingly calls the soldier “Son,” insists that he just doesn’t understand the way the world works. The arms of the Dream apparently don’t extend to those who fight for it. At what is perhaps the most emotional moment in the verses, the singer then goes back to Vietnam, remembering a fellow soldier – a “brother,” Bruce calls him – that he fought alongside at Khe Sahn. “They’re still here, he’s all gone,” Bruce shouts, and doesn’t bother finishing the bar. E Street fills out the line with pummel.

Maybe the most remarkable thing revealed upon repeated listens of “Born in the U.S.A.” is just how much the song chugs – there is no fat on this thing at all. Even the words are so densely packed that Bruce has no choice but to shout them out, choking on the weight of every syllable as it lurches from inside of him. It was recorded live in the studio, and the version that made Springsteen a superstar is actually the second-ever time that the E Street Band ever played “Born in the U.S.A.” as a group. You can hear the impatience and passion of the players, and as the song chimes on, even Bittan’s synth starts to twist into a grimace.

And then there’s the coda. The ending – Weinberg’s drums, specifically – pops all of the clinched shoulder muscles that Bruce had been flexing from the opening strums of Nebraska all the way through 1982 and ‘83 and up through “Born in the USA”’s five verses. It circles back around the darkness on the edge of town – lest the prosperity of the ’80s had caused you to forget – and gives it blinking neon attention in the form of Roy Bittan’s tinfoil synth. It carpetbombs the America that Ronald Reagan had already been selling the nation for two years before the song had been written, an America of clean streets and cleaner teeth, a CEO at every dinner table and blinging factories, all lit by a sun that wouldn’t also rise – it would only rise. This vision of America – the one that has no way of explaining anything that has happened here since, from Rodney King to Hurricane Katrina – is shouted down by the veins bulging from Bruce’s neck. Born in the U.S.A. sold fifteen million copies and everyone in America suddenly had to compete with the separate visions of two Bosses.

Only they didn’t. Reagan, bizarrely, tried to co-opt the song for his 1984 presidential campaign, and was quickly (and politely) denied permission by Springsteen. To this day “Born in the U.S.A.” is popularly considered a patriotic anthem. And it is. But it’s not the blinded brand of patriotism that baptizes every one of our country’s actions, the version of patriotism that our Founding Fathers themselves fought a war against. No, on “Born in the U.S.A.,” Springsteen’s shouts echo like the Grand Canyon against the abyss of American injustice. Like an interventionist, he tries to take control of the plane before it crashes into the mountain. Because when you love something, you’ll do anything to save it from itself.

It would not be unfair to say that Springsteen’s relationship with “Born in the U.S.A.” is tenuous at best. Though he opened every date of his 1985 World Tour with the song (performed in front of a massive American flag, no less), it is far from a concert standard. The original demo was released as part of the Tracks set in 1998, and subsequent live performances have ranged from loping 12-string acoustic versions to the traditional full-band version to (on the solo Devils & Dust tour) a boot-shout version performed on stomping board and bullet mic. An E Street show in 2008 is more likely to end with the immigrant anthem “American Land” than it is “Born in the U.S.A.”

And so the song begins its end with Bruce yelping that he’s a “Long gone daddy in the U.S.A.,” a term that links him immediately to Hank Williams. Hank, of course, was yet another version of the American Dream. Widely considered to be the greatest country music songwriter of all-time, he belongs to that Woody Guthrie school of dustbowl poets who saw a vision of America that didn’t fit into Reagan’s. Having been barred from the Grand Ole Opry for his struggles to stay sober, Hank was trying to prove his reliability to the very people who would later canonize him. Then, on January 1, 1953, at the dawning of the rock ‘n’ roll era that would be just as essential as the country tradition in forming the identity of Bruce Springsteen, he shot himself full of B12 and morphine and drank himself to death in the backseat of a Cadillac, shriveling away as the spotlight drank him up.

“Oh, God, no,” Bruce whimpers. And the song ends. words/ m. garner

Download:
MP3: Bruce Springsteen :: Born In The U.S.A. (Nebraska demo)

~lee.

9:24 PM — Ifill: “Governor, could you possibly pretend to answer at least one goddamned question, please?”...

whatever they're paying these guys it ain't enough. fucking hilarious.

[from wonkette...]

Happy Night of the Century, fellow Americans! We have longed for this night, and we have dreaded it. Poor Gwen Ifill was walked to the stage like some dead pope, the contestants are here and ready to go, our drinking game is also ready to go — are you?! And the pre-game liveblog is just a sweet click away. Ready your beverages, people, and let’s do this thing. 9:00 PM — It really was sad seeing poor Gwen walked in by four or five bodyguards/nurses. She told the crowd, “If you have any questions — I fell, I wasn’t pushed.” (True!)

9:00 PM — Oh look they are here! Sarah just said, “Hey can I call you Joe?” Joe smiled and said sure.

9:02 PM — Well, they both look great.

9:03 PM — But Gwen … good lord, why are you wearing Hillary’s old weird patterned blazer? A tribute?

9:03 PM — Simple talking points on the economy and the Obama plan: “We’re going to fundamentally change the focus of economic policy. We’re going to focus on the middle class.”

9:05 PM — “I betcha ya gonna hear some fear in that voice.” Oh lord she is talking about soccer games. She did not answer the question. She is repeating this, her eyes are even moving as she reads this, in her mind — or maybe shined on the inside of her glasses.

9:06 PM — Oh lord, five minutes in, just 90 seconds into her first answer, and it is total gibberish. And she looks down at her notes and grimaces.

9:07 PM — Biden quickly and cleverly gets in a bit about how he worked on legislation to stop “violence against women.” How’s that, Mrs. Buy Your Rape Kit You Rape Victim?

9:08 PM — Palin responds to the “McCain was saying fundamentals of the economy are strong” with … uh, she says “fundamental,” singular, and says “maverick” three times. Drink, drink, drink.

9:10 PM — Uh, Sarah, there weren’t really many $100,000 houses even before this decade’s housing boom … unless you’re buying a $1.75 crack house in Saginaw on eBay!

9:10 PM — Hey, that is a good common-sense point, from our Gov. Palin: “Don’t go into debt when you can’t afford it.” And then she says Heck, Betcha, Gonna, Git ‘er done and who knows what else. Could we let Sarah not be Sarah for a little while, please, Alaskan Inuit God who lets her live on Your Holy Lands?

9:12 PM — Biden talks about McCain’s article in a “major magazine” about the great GOP plan to ruin health care the same way they ruined the financial industry. Of course it was just some trade mag and McCain didn’t even write it — he doesn’t write anything under his byline.

9:13 PM — Ha ha, now Biden is going to clobber Palin with those dirty liberal facts. Wow, he is pretty good at this, isn’t he?

9:14 PM — Ha ha, Palin just ignores everything. “I may not answer questions the way the moderator — I’m gonna talk about being mayor.” What?

9:15 PM — Gwen cuts off Palin. IN THE TANK.

9:15 PM — Biden wants fairness, for people who are not rich. What an elitist! Got to refill the Goblet of Fire here.

9:16 PM — Well, there is the clip from Biden. Middle class, no increases in taxes for anyone making under a quarter-million, tax cuts for everyone making less than $150,000 per year, simple, didn’t sound like a lecture.

9:18 PM — Oh lord, Palin just recites some stuff they told her about “wealth redistribution.”

9:18 PM — Ifill: “Governor, are you interested in defending Senator McCain’s health care plan?”

9:19 PM — Well, that’s one definition of defense?

9:20 PM — And the Biden knife comes out: “McCain TAXES your health-care plan from your employer … and TWENTY MILLION of you are going to be dropped. I call that the ultimate Bridge to Nowhere.” (GROANS, GASPS FROM CROWD.)

9:21 PM — Palin is just busily reading her notes to herself. Her lips are moving!

9:21 PM — Biden has his first stumble, on the word “characterize.” The campaign staff is in the back all crossing their fingers that this is the only one. Oh shit he just called McCain policies “unpatriotic.”

9:22 PM — Palin wants to go back to the energy plan. Has the energy plan been mentioned tonight?

9:23 PM — “Tell ‘em.” “Somethin’ else.” “Bless their hearts, doin’ what they need to do.” “Aren’t comin’ to the big multinational corporations.”

9:24 PM — This is the “Let Sarah Be Sarah” thing the wingnuts want so bad.

9:24 PM — Ifill: “Governor, could you possibly pretend to answer at least one goddamned question, please?”

9:25 PM — Biden: Obama voted against oil company tax breaks, McCain voted for them. The End.

9:25 PM — Biden shows some nice class with some “folksy” talk about how he likes how socialist Sarah gives $1,000 checks to Alaskans every day.

9:26 PM — Ifill: “Gov. Palin, could you just answer something about subprime?”

9:27 PM — Palin: “Yes, I could,” and then recites something about how “we have John McCain to thank.”

9:27 PM — This is exhausting, listening to her.

9:27 PM — Ha, Barack Obama the child was warning the Fed & Treasury two years ago that the subprime nightmare was already happening. (Your editor knew this, too, which is why he sold his house in Nevada just before the whole bubble imploded.) But John McCain was “surprised” by the collapse in December. Really?

9:29 PM — Exasperated Gwen Ifill: “Gov. Palin, would you maybe like to respond to what somebody here actually said?” Palin: “He’s wrong. So let’s talk about my experience givin’ breaks to folks.”

9:31 — Palin reinforces her position that “it doesn’t matter” whether global warming is man-made or not. REALLY? Then how are we supposed to solve it, if we don’t know what causes it? This is an actual logical fallacy. You decide how to act on issues based on the mistakes of the past. This is called, what is that thing, “the study of history.”

9:32 — Thank you Joe for just saying that to her. Oh now he wants to drill. He wants to drill? Sure, why not.

9:33 — Palin says that we are “raping the intercontinental shelf,” for some reason. What is this now? That sounds like a “rape” joke and it’s racist. Also: would she make the intercontinental shelf pay for a rape kit? Saves tax money!

9:34 — Joe Biden explains his plan to poison the Chinese with coal-cleanin’ jobs. “Look, no one cars about the damn Orientals, lady,” he says.

9:36 — Joe also wants to give the gays some rights or whatever the hell they want, fur coats, whatever.

9:38 — Sarah Palin won’t let the gays have any rights because they may want to get married at some time, AND THEN WHAT? It’s their choice, they know the implications.

9:40 — Gwen, who is in the tank because she writes blaxpoitation scripts about the Obamas for the Black Panthers, makes fun of Sarah Palin and says it’s time to talk about foreign policy.

9:41 — [Surge crap talk for a while. Barack Obama didn't like the Surge and John McCain didn't like the Surge so much as he liked killing people in general, for more years, etc.] STUFF HAPPENED.

9:42 — Biden lays out his plan to leave Iraq in 16 months, clearly.

9:43 — Ha ha, Sarah Palin is silent for a few seconds and then spits at Joe, “YOU ARE RAISING THE WHITE FLAG OF SURRENDER.” That’s one of the lines she memorized or saw George Bush say on the teevee in 2005 during her once-yearly “check the news” day, in which she watches the Leno monologue.

9:46 — Joe Biden gives more facts about foreign policy for two minutes, whatever, no one cares. Oh, Sarah Palin knows that there’s sand in the Middle East, and pretty camels! She is CRUSHING HIM in the expectations game.

9:47 — Sarah Palin’s response. We just had like 50 things we wanted to comment on but now we forget them all. Let’s just say she squealed at one point, about Muslim hatred. Oh, here’s one: she said “nucular” and her CNN independent Ohio voter chart SKYROCKETED in happiness. Otherwise, they hate her.

9:48 — Joe’s look is hilarious. He is DYING to go at her. Instead he just says the word “TALK” repeatedly. It’s his safe word to shut out the hate demons. Anyway, Joe Biden wants to talk to the Muslims.

9:52 — Sarah just thanked Joe for liking Israel, because she does too! OMG they have so much in common!!! They’re like the same person and should date. Joe, for one, could use a solid hate-fuck right now.

9:56 — She just talked for five minutes about how she will reform, uh, the various foreign policies, and that it doesn’t matter what George Bush did — everyone screws up! — but it does matter that the past happened, because things that happened in the past are, uh, former events, and former events… nucular weapons. They hate America! Reform, they call the… it’s Maverick. George Bush is the thing that no maverick weapons, kill Americans will they?! Oh and Afghanistan about Gwen? Maverchanger sand Bush happy flower fart die.

~lee.

my favorite, of course, was "on the bailout"...

i know i said i'd go easy on ol' eskimo pie but this was just too good to pass up. enjoy.

[from slate...]

The Poetry of Sarah Palin

Recent works by the Republican vice presidential candidate.

By Hart Seely
Posted Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2008, at 1:25 PM ET

---

It's been barely six weeks since the arctic-fresh voice of Alaskan poet Sarah Heath Palin burst upon the lower 48. In campaign interviews, the governor, mother, and maverick GOP vice presidential candidate has chosen to bypass the media filter and speak directly to fans through her intensely personal verses, spoken poems that drill into the vagaries of modern life as if they were oil deposits beneath a government-protected tundra.

Thursday's nationally televised debate with Democrat Joe Biden could give Palin the chance to cement her reputation as one of the country's most innovative practitioners of what she calls "verbiage."

The poems collected here were compiled verbatim from only three brief interviews. So just imagine the work Sarah Palin could produce over the next four (or eight) years.

"On Good and Evil"

It is obvious to me
Who the good guys are in this one
And who the bad guys are.
The bad guys are the ones
Who say Israel is a stinking corpse,
And should be wiped off
The face of the earth.

That's not a good guy.

(To K. Couric, CBS News, Sept. 25, 2008)

"You Can't Blink"

You can't blink.
You have to be wired
In a way of being
So committed to the mission,

The mission that we're on,
Reform of this country,
And victory in the war,
You can't blink.

So I didn't blink.

(To C. Gibson, ABC News, Sept. 11, 2008)

"Haiku"

These corporations.
Today it was AIG,
Important call, there.

(To S. Hannity, Fox News, Sept. 18, 2008)

"Befoulers of the Verbiage"

It was an unfair attack on the verbiage
That Senator McCain chose to use,
Because the fundamentals,
As he was having to explain afterwards,
He means our workforce.
He means the ingenuity of the American.
And of course that is strong,
And that is the foundation of our economy.
So that was an unfair attack there,
Again based on verbiage.

(To S. Hannity, Fox News, Sept. 18, 2008)

"Secret Conversation"

I asked President Karzai:

"Is that what you are seeking, also?
"That strategy that has worked in Iraq?
"That John McCain had pushed for?
"More troops?
"A counterinsurgency strategy?"

And he said, "Yes."

(To K. Couric, CBS News, Sept. 25, 2008)

"Outside"

I am a Washington outsider.
I mean,
Look at where you are.
I'm a Washington outsider.

I do not have those allegiances
To the power brokers,
To the lobbyists.
We need someone like that.

(To C. Gibson, ABC News, Sept. 11, 2008)

"On the Bailout"

Ultimately,
What the bailout does
Is help those who are concerned
About the health care reform
That is needed
To help shore up our economy,
Helping the—
It's got to be all about job creation, too.

Shoring up our economy
And putting it back on the right track.
So health care reform
And reducing taxes
And reining in spending
Has got to accompany tax reductions
And tax relief for Americans.
And trade.

We've got to see trade
As opportunity
Not as a competitive, scary thing.
But one in five jobs
Being created in the trade sector today,
We've got to look at that
As more opportunity.
All those things.

(To K. Couric, CBS News, Sept. 25, 2008)

"Challenge to a Cynic"

You are a cynic.
Because show me where
I have ever said
That there's absolute proof
That nothing that man
Has ever conducted
Or engaged in,
Has had any effect,
Or no effect,
On climate change.

(To C. Gibson, ABC News, Sept. 11, 2008)

"On Reporters"

It's funny that
A comment like that
Was kinda made to,
I don't know,
You know ...

Reporters.

(To K. Couric, CBS News, Sept. 25, 2008)

"Small Mayors"

You know,
Small mayors,
Mayors of small towns—
Quote, unquote—
They're on the front lines.

(To S. Hannity, Fox News, Sept. 19, 2008)

~lee.

war is over! if you want it...

[from salon...]

Remember Iraq?

The drop in violence has made the war an afterthought -- and allowed McCain to claim we're "winning." Here's why we're not -- and we can't.

By Gary Kamiya

Sep. 30, 2008 | With Congress rejecting the $700 billion bailout package, the Dow falling 700 points and the U.S. economy on the edge of a cliff, no one is paying much attention to Iraq. Money talks, and incomprehensible and endless wars walk. From a purely financial perspective, that dismissive attitude makes no sense. The Iraq war has already cost almost $700 billion, and as Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes have argued, its total cost, factoring in huge back-end costs like disability payments, could end up exceeding $3 trillion. As Tom Engelhardt and Chalmers Johnson point out on TomDispatch, the money we've poured and are continuing to pour down the bottomless pit of Iraq, to the tune of $10 billion a month, could have bailed us out many times over.

But of course, the Iraq war is about a lot more than money. It's about the 146,000 U.S. troops still stationed there, and their families. It's about the stability of the Middle East, and our vital national interest in ensuring that it does not explode. It's about the overall direction of our foreign policy. It's about how America is perceived throughout the world. And it's about the fate of Iraq itself, a nation that our invasion devastated and that we owe our best efforts to rebuild.

Along with fixing our economy, then, what we should do about Iraq is the most important issue facing the country. And the choices offered by the two presidential candidates could not be more different. John McCain will continue the same policies as George W. Bush. He insists that Iraq remains "the central front in the war on terror," claims that the surge was a decisive turning point and that we are now winning the war, and warns that if America elects Barack Obama, we will lose, with catastrophic consequences. Obama argues that the war was a mistake to begin with, that it led us to "take our eye off the ball" and allow Osama bin Laden to escape and al-Qaida to regroup, and that it has strengthened Iran. He says that if elected he will withdraw American troops in stages over a 16-month period.

The first presidential debate highlighted these clear differences between Obama and McCain. But, unfortunately, Obama did not really challenge McCain's central claim that we are "winning" in Iraq. There are good political reasons why he didn't: The fact that he opposed a war that McCain ardently supported, and that most Americans have long turned against, allowed him to win the debate without venturing onto that dangerous terrain. But as a result, McCain's exaggerated claims about the surge, and his larger claim that we are winning in Iraq, have gone unrefuted. And what is actually happening in Iraq bears no resemblance to McCain's triumphant vision.

George W. Bush has defined "victory" in Iraq as a unified, democratic and stable country. McCain echoed this definition in the debate, saying that Iraq will be "a stable ally in the region and a fledgling democracy." Yet McCain never explained just how Iraq is going to become unified, democratic or stable, let alone a U.S. ally -- and Obama did not demand that he do so. McCain was lucky he didn't, because there is no answer.

McCain's entire position on Iraq boils down to two words: the surge. According to McCain, Gen. Petraeus' counterinsurgency tactic worked to perfection, and after years of failed approaches, victory is now within our grasp. McCain endlessly attacks Obama for not supporting the surge, painting his rival as a craven defeatist who, as McCain's top foreign policy advisor put it, "would rather lose a war that we are winning than lose an election by alienating his base."

The media has largely bought into this rosy view of the surge. Violence has fallen sharply in Iraq and U.S. casualties are down, and the media and the U.S. public have tacitly accepted both that the surge was largely responsible for these laudable outcomes and, to a lesser degree, that the underlying situation in Iraq has fundamentally improved. Unfortunately, neither claim is true.

First, the surge was not primarily responsible for the drop in sectarian violence in Iraq. It played a role, but was far less important than the simple, grim fact that the Shiite militias in Baghdad had already succeeded in ethnically cleansing the city. This was established by a team of UCLA geographers who analyzed night-light signatures in the city. They found that night lights in Sunni neighborhoods declined dramatically just before the February 2007 surge and never came back. "Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," John Agnew, a UCLA professor of geography and the study's lead author, told Science Daily. "By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left ... The surge really seems to have been a case of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted."

The UCLA scientists' findings are supported by Shiite expert Juan Cole, who argues that the surge actually helped the Shiite militias to ethnically cleanse Baghdad by disarming Sunnis. "Rates of violence declined once the ethnic cleansing was far advanced, just because there were fewer mixed neighborhoods," Cole argues.

Joining Cole and the UCLA team is one of the best field reporters in Iraq, Nir Rosen, author of an important piece, "The Myth of the Surge," which appeared in Rolling Stone. Rosen points out that another key factor behind the cessation of violence is that U.S. troops began bribing their former deadly enemies, Sunni insurgents, to cooperate. (The Sunnis had turned against al-Qaida because of its brutal tactics -- a key factor in the decline of terrorist attacks in Iraq that the surge had nothing to do with.) But these Sunnis, called "the Awakening" or "Sons of Iraq," will be off the U.S. payroll on October 1, and Rosen paints a grim picture of what is likely to happen next. "There is little doubt what will happen when the massive influx of American money stops: Unless the new Iraqi state continues to operate as a vast bribing machine, the insurgent Sunnis who have joined the new militias will likely revert to fighting the ruling Shiites, who still refuse to share power."

The final reason for the cessation of violence was the stand-down by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, which is lying low. That stand-down, which can be reversed at any time, was brokered by -- Iran. But Iran is playing all sides: It supports both Maliki and Sadr. The U.S. simply cannot compete in this kind of deep game, at which Iran has excelled for centuries, without diplomatic engagement. But for McCain, that is anathema.

Insofar as the surge helped to contribute to lowered levels of violence in Iraq, it is to be commended. And there is no doubt that Gen. Petraeus' adoption of classic counterinsurgency doctrine, which mandates moving troops out of secure bases and closer to the people, was a significant improvement over previous tactics. But as the above should make clear, the surge was not the main reason for the reduction of violence -- which remains at terrifyingly high levels. In any case, the mere reduction of sectarian violence does not prove that the U.S. is "winning." Even the Bush administration has acknowledged that the critical issue in Iraq is political reconciliation. And the sad reality is that there has been no political reconciliation in Iraq, that there are no indications it is on the horizon and that there is no reason to believe that the continued presence of U.S. troops will help bring it about.

As analyst Peter Galbraith points out in an excellent piece in the New York Review of Books, the salient fact about Iraq is that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government is allied with Iran, wants to create a Shiite Islamic state and will never integrate the Sunni Awakening forces into the Iraqi Army, because it correctly sees them as threatening the current regime's existence. Its rapprochement with the Kurds, the only group that supports the U.S., is fragile and could collapse at any time, with the fate of the disputed, oil-rich city of Kirkuk likely to be the trigger.

Galbraith sums up the situation thus: "George W. Bush has put the United States on the side of undemocratic Iraqis who are Iran's allies. John McCain would continue the same approach. It is hard to understand how this can be called a success -- or a path to victory."

Most critically, the Maliki regime wants U.S. forces to leave Iraq -- on the same 16-month timetable as the one Obama has proposed. The Iraqi people also want the U.S. out. The U.S. simply lacks the power to oppose this demand, and McCain's bluster about staying in Iraq until "victory" is absurd in the face of it.

McCain's talk of "victory" is not just logically false, it is morally obscene. Our unprovoked invasion destroyed Iraq. Up to a million Iraqis may have died. The infrastructure is dreadful, far worse than in Saddam's time. Most of Iraq's doctors have fled or been killed. Vast numbers of Iraqis have been forced into exile, and few have dared to return. The sectarian war our invasion let loose has ripped the country apart. Iraq remains one of the most dangerous and violence-torn countries in the world. (On Sunday, five bomb attacks in Baghdad killed at least 27 people.)

What do we do confronted with this situation? What do we owe the Iraqi people? What do we owe ourselves? What is in our national interest? And with our economy melting down, how long can we spend $10 billion a month waiting to decide?

There are no easy answers to these questions. But we cannot hide them behind cheap talk of "victory" and incoherent fear-mongering. We will have to hope that in January we will get a new administration, one not deluded by empty slogans and neoconservative ideology. And they will then have to begin the difficult process of figuring out how to responsibly extricate ourselves and the Iraqi people from the nightmare we created.

~lee.